“What? Why? I’m pretty sure it’s not that difficult to open a guild… Can’t you just stamp on the paper?” Siegfried grumbled in disbelief.
Creating a guild was something anyone could do as long as they had money, so Siegfried was confused about the issue.
“Don’t tell me I can’t make a guild because I’m a king…?”
“No, that is not the reason.”
“Then?”
“You are King Siegfried van Proa of the… P-Protein Kingdom…?”
“Proatine. It’s the Proatine Kingdom.”
“Ah, I apologize. Proatine… I have never heard of it before, that is why I made a mistake…”
“…”
“Anyway, it is impossible for Your Majesty to establish a guild right now.”
“That’s why I’m asking the reason. What’s the reason?”
“You have been blacklisted by the Mercenary Guild…”
“Mercenary Guild? Blacklisted…?” Siegfried tilted his head in confusion. “Me? Impossible…”
“It says here that you recently hired the Mercenary King Grimwood… and stabbed him in the back like a coward…”
“Ah!” Siegfried finally realized. It was indeed despicable of him to hire a mercenary only to stab him in the back, but Siegfried had something to say about that.
“Hey, still… Do you know what kind of a person Grimwood was? He ate people whenever he was bored, you know? So why am I blacklisted for getting rid of someone evil like him? Does that even make sense?”
It was true that what he did was despicable, but Grimwood deserved to die. He was an immortal being that wreaked havoc whenever he was bored, and he would slaughter countless people for his enjoyment.
Siegfried wasn’t expecting the Mercenary Guild to reward him for his services, but he didn’t expect that they would blacklist him for it…
“I agree with you, and it seems that the executives at the Mercenary Guild agree with you, too. In fact, they seem to be praising you for what you did.”
“But they decided to blacklist me?”
“That’s… Well, the requests that Grimwood had accepted went up in smoke after Your Majesty killed him, so…”
“…”
“The Mercenary Guild faced quite the backlash because of it, and both their and Your Majesty’s credit suffered a blow as a result…”
Pros and Cons.
There was bound to be a downside for every upside. It was good that he was able to get rid of both Grimwood and Magnus at the same time, but he never imagined that he was going to get into trouble with the Mercenary Guild because of it.
He thought that there wouldn’t be any issues because Grimwood was quite infamous, but…
“So I can’t make my own guild?”
“We have a policy of not approving requests from Adventurers who had lost their credit, so…”
“…”
“I would advise that you go to the Mercenary Guild and restore your credit with them first if you wish to establish a guild.”
“All right…” Siegfried grumbled in response and went to the Mercenary Guild.
***
“Owner punk! Did you get rejected?!” Hamchi cried out outside the Adventurer Guild.
“Yeah… I believe that’s what happened…” Siegfried replied while sulking.
“Then, are you giving up on establishing your own guild?”
“I want to… but I really need a guild.”
The reason that Siegfried needed to establish his own guild was because of the debuff Loser’s Shame.
It was an extremely scary debuff inflicted on the guild members of the losing guild. This debuff made the losing guild’s members receive fifty percent additional damage from the victorious guild’s members for an entire year.
In short, Siegfried absolutely needed this debuff to be able to put an end to the Genesis Guild, and the only way he could cast this debuff on them was through waging a guild war against them.
It went without saying that it was going to be impossible to wage a guild war without a guild, which meant that the Genesis Guild members were going to keep coming after him no matter how many times he killed them.
In other words, their fight would be an endless battle of attrition.
“Then, what are you going to do now?” Hamchi asked.
“What else? I have to go to the Mercenary Guild and restore my credit with them,” Siegfried replied while shaking his head in disbelief.
“Kyu?”
“Let’s go,” Siegfried said as he headed toward the Mercenary Guild in Articland.
***
Siegfried entered the Mercenary Guild and submitted a request, and he was able to meet one of the guild’s officers soon afterward.
“Hello, King Siegfried van Proa. My name is Keres, and I am a manager at the department in charge of evaluating a mercenary’s credit with us,” the guild officer named Keres introduced himself.
“My name is Siegfried,” he replied.
“We are quite familiar with the issue you have raised, and we truly believe that it is such a shame that happened. Actually, Grimwood was a monster that even our guild could not do anything about, so…”
“Ah, you guys were familiar with him, but you went ahead and blacklisted me?” Siegfried retorted.
“I apologize, but we were barraged with complaints by Grimwood’s clients, so…”
“Hmm…”
“Grimwood was a Mercenary King, so the requests he accepted were extremely difficult requests, and our guild had to pay a substantial penalty or pay extra to ask other mercenaries to accept it…”
“It seems that I have unintentionally caused trouble for the guild. I didn’t think that far ahead,” Siegfried apologized sincerely.
He was evil and vicious deep inside, but he still knew when to admit his mistakes.
“Not at all! Grimwood deserved to die based on the evil deeds he had committed. There have been a lot of complaints about him whenever he went on a rampage, and there was this one instance where he devoured a live infant whole…” Keres gritted his teeth while recalling the atrocities that the Lycanthrope Lord had committed.
“Anyway, I am certain that Your Majesty has done something good, but we have no choice but to penalize you according to our rules…”
“Is there any way I can restore my credit?”
“May you please give me a moment? I will speak to my superiors and get back to you.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
Two hours later…
“Your Majesty!”
“Yes?”
“I found a way for you to restore your credit. Would you like to hear about it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It is actually quite simple. The guild is willing to restore your credit if Your Majesty completes the requests that Grimwood had left behind. I have personally received the approval of my superiors on the matter.”
‘Ugh… It’s a quest again… But what can I do? I’m just reaping what I sowed…’ Siegfried grumbled inwardly.
He gnashed his teeth, annoyed, but he knew that he had no other choice.
It was only right for him to clean up the mess he had created, and it didn’t matter even though the mess was created while he was doing a good deed because he still had to take responsibility for it.
“What should I do?” Siegfried asked.
“First…” Keres browsed through his files before replying, “There is one request to rescue a noble child and one request for a special mission at the Arachnid Temporary Outpost… Hmm… Your Majesty just has to complete these two missions to restore your credit.”
“Can you give me the details?” Siegfried asked.
Then, the quest details popped up in front of his eyes.
[Rescue Operation]
[Go to the Alune Kingdom in the western region of the continent and rescue the kidnapped noble child.]
[Progress: 0% (0/1)]
[Reward: Restore 50% of the credit with the Mercenary Guild]
[Warning: You can get cancer during this quest.]
[Special Forces]
[Meet General Overlock at the Arachnid Temporary Outpost and complete his special mission.]
[Progress: 0% (0/1)]
[Reward: Restore 50% credit with the Mercenary Guild]
[Warning: This quest is extremely difficult!]
Siegfried accepted both of the quests. He found it quite annoying to deal with them, but he had no choice but to accept them if he wanted to restore his credit with the Mercenary Guild.
[Alert: You have accepted the Quest – ‘Rescue Operation’!]
[Alert: You have accepted the Quest – ‘Special Forces’!]
Siegfried looked at Keres and asked, “Which one should I do first?”
“I suggest that you start with rescuing the noble child. Here are the files related to it,” Keres replied as he passed a stack of documents to him.
“I guess I’ll go and rescue the kid first…” Siegfried replied as he accepted the file.
He was walking out of the Mercenary Guild while tilting his head in confusion, ‘I can get cancer during the quest? What does that mean?’
The warning on the quest details was kind of strange for some reason…
***
Siegfried suddenly stopped in his tracks after suddenly thinking of something, ‘Hold on. Why should I do these in the first place? I mean… I really can’t be bothered…’
Then, his brain started running at lightning speed to come up with an ingenious idea.
“Kyu? What are you doing, owner punk?”
“I’m thinking about how I can pass the work to someone else.”
“Kyu?”
“I mean, there’s no need for me to do both, right? I can just ask someone else to do it for me.”
“K-Kyu…?”
“I’ll just do one and ask someone else to do the other,” Siegfried said with a shrug.
Then, he went to a Mercenary Guild branch in another city and placed a request. He requested one of the two remaining Mercenary Kings—Mercenary King Dreyfus—to take on the Rescue Operation quest.
Of course, it cost him quite a lot to place a request for the Mercenary King, but money was no longer an issue after he gained a massive amount of gold from the Dragon’s Treasure Chest.
“Lalala~” Siegfried nonchalantly hummed a tune as he skipped through the streets.
“…Your genius frightens me, owner punk,” Hamchi said while shaking his head in disbelief at his owner’s ingenuity.
***
“Ah! Lieutenant Colonel Sieg!” Lieutenant General Overlock—no, General Overlock warmly welcomed Siegfried.
“You should have told me that you were coming! I would have prepared a grand welcome for our war hero! Hahaha!”
“There is no need for that, General, haha… Ah, please say hello. This is Major Carell, do you remember him?”
Carell immediately ran up to General Overlock and greeted him with a salute.
“Loyalty! Major Carell greets the general!”
“M-Major Carell…? I thought you fell in battle…?”
“His maj—I mean, Lieutenant Colonel Sieg saved me from the clutches of death and gave me a new lease on life, sir!”
“Really? Haha! Amazing! You are truly amazing, Lieutenant Colonel Sieg! You have never ceased to amaze me!” Overlock exclaimed while looking at Siegfried with passionate eyes.
“Hahaha…”
“Anyway, thanks for coming! I got promoted, thanks to you!”
“Really?”
“We were able to find out how to control the Cryptids after studying the Mother you caught for us, and the war has become much easier for us now! We’re using the monsters to fight the monsters! How amazing is that?! Haha!”
Siegfried suddenly remembered how he had used Grimwood to fight Magnus.
‘I got into trouble for that… tsk…’
That was the sole reason he had to take these annoying quests in the first place…
“I was able to get promoted because of that, and this is all thanks to you, Sieg!”
“Congratulations, sir.”
Theft is never good, try looking at [ pawread dot com ].
“Haha! Thank you! Now that I think of it, what brings you here?”
“That is…” Siegfried explained why he came all the way to the Arachnid Temporary Outpost.
“Hmm… I see… so something like that happened…”
“But what is this special mission?”
“That’s…” General Overlock looked around before whispering, “We have a spy in our barracks…”
